As previously mentioned, I have a few (well, okay, over 100) coroplast (corrugated plastic) boxes that I've been snatching from mid-air over the dumpster at my work. Today I saw this post on the Make: blog- an 8-foot wingspan RC plane with a weed-whacker engine, fabricated from coroplast!

I had considered making a plane from the stuff but figured it was too heavy. Guess I just wasn't thinking big enough!

idris_arslanian wrote:Aw, come on, Theo. I came for the "Let's Build It" and now leave disappointed.

Disappointed? Are you imagining a bunch of hacked-together shipping boxes actually flying??The only way I don't like the idea is the R/C part. Which means nobody would actually be up in there FLYING it. Like, oh, say, ME.

No, you're right, they wouldn't be appropriate for human-sized aircraft at all. That'd be more the realm of carefully-sculpted EPS with carbon-fiber skin.

I do wonder about whether it would be possible to make a "flock" of very small R/C flyers with tiny electric props, membrane wings, thin-film li-poly batteries, and (MIT-level challenge!) proximity sensing & processing of the other flock members.

idris_arslanian wrote:You're talking about building a radio controlled Blue Angels squad?

Well, I wasn't thinking quite THAT precise. They'd just need to avoid colliding with each other.

The R/C controller could steer a "squadron leader", maybe, OR... if the flyers' onboard sensing & AI were good enough, the pilot on the ground could just sort of nudge the swarm in a general direction. It might be more like synchronized herding than piloting. THAT would be a sight to see.